Geek Fitness - Path to the Dark Sidehttps://www.geekfitness.net
I’m a runner, a fitness junkie, a nutrition nut, but most importantly–I’m a geek. I used to be overweight, unhealthy, and lazy. I lost 155 pounds, and along the way, I figured out how to lead a healthy, active lifestyle without giving up a single bit of the geekery that makes me who I am. Every episode of Geek Fitness Health Hacks is packed with strategies that I personally used to overhaul my life, and I want to share them with you so that you can be as happy and healthy as I am, all while making sure that you keep geeking out for the long haul. I have severe anxiety, and even though I I practice meditation, study Buddhism and am all about mindfulness, I still take medication to keep my panic attacks under control. Mental health is every bit as important as physical health, and I don’t want that to get shoved under the rug. I don’t want there to be a stigma about it, so I discuss strategies for self-care and dealing with panic and stress in your life. Additionally, I truly believe that compassion and kindness are essential to being healthy and happy, so this is a very positive show. I want to motivate you into living a good life and being happy, not scare you into one. So are you ready to press start, player one?Tue, 12 Dec 2017 16:10:47 +0000enhourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.1https://i1.wp.com/www.geekfitness.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Geek-Fitness-1.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1Geek Fitness - Path to the Dark Sidehttps://www.geekfitness.net
3232I’m a runner, a fitness junkie, a nutrition nut, but most importantly--I’m a geek. I used to be overweight, unhealthy, and lazy. I lost 155 pounds when I discovered running and figured out how to lead a healthy, active lifestyle without giving up any of geekery that makes me who I am. <br />
<br />
And Star Wars makes up a big part who I am.<br />
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In April 2018, I am running in the the Star Wars Half Marathon at Walt Disney World. I will be running The First Order Challenge, a 10k (6.2 miles) followed by a half-marathon (13.1 miles) the next day. My wife and two best friends will be joining me for the Dark Side 5k (3.1 miles), too. <br />
<br />
Across this season of the Geek Fitness podcast, I will keep you updated on my training regimen, geekery, and sharing action points on how I went from the geek to fitgeek (so that hopefully you can, too).<br />
<br />
It's also where I came from and what prompted me to lose weight and change my life. I grew up as the fat kid, and now I'm the fit guy. At some point, according to one of my former students, I went from being "a fat dude who lost a bunch of weight" to "that guy whose in great shape." That's awesome. I want that to be you, too.<br />
<br />
I have severe anxiety, and even though I practice meditation, study Buddhism and am all about mindfulness, I still take medication to keep my panic attacks under control. Mental health is every bit as important as physical health, and I don’t want that to get shoved under the rug. I don’t want there to be a stigma about it, so I discuss strategies for self-care and dealing with panic and stress in your life. Additionally, I truly believe that compassion and kindness are essential to being healthy and happy, so this is a very positive show. <br />
<br />
I want to motivate you into living a good life and being happy, not scare you into one. So are you ready, player one? It's time to press start. Game on.B.J. KeetoncleanepisodicB.J. Keetonpodcast@geekfitness.netpodcast@geekfitness.net (B.J. Keeton)BJ KeetonFrom a 310-lb lazy nerd to the runDisney Star Wars Half MarathonGeek Fitness - Path to the Dark Sidehttps://www.geekfitness.net/wp-content/uploads/powerpress/From_Fat_to_Fit_-_Podcast_Art.pnghttps://www.geekfitness.net
37557169From Fat to Fit – Chapter 1 – Morbid Obesity? Nahhhh…https://www.geekfitness.net/chapter1/
Sat, 02 Sep 2017 12:59:49 +0000https://www.geekfitness.net/?p=4553https://www.geekfitness.net/chapter1/#respondhttps://www.geekfitness.net/chapter1/feed/0<p>Chapter 1, in which a urologist calls me morbidly obese, and I just can't handle the truth. #tomcruise</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.geekfitness.net/chapter1/">From Fat to Fit – Chapter 1 – Morbid Obesity? Nahhhh…</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.geekfitness.net">Geek Fitness</a>.</p>

what’s in this chapter:

I was 20 years old when my urologist diagnosed me as “morbidly obese.” It was my junior year of college, and I will never forget those two words, his demeanor, or how I felt during that meeting.

He was going to have to surgically remove a kidney stone (which started hurting during the opening night showing of The Matrix Revolutions and totally prevented whatever small enjoyment I would have been able to eke out of the movie). He was warning my mother and me about the dangers of anesthesia on a person of my size. I don’t know what I weighed at the time, but I was pretty hefty, likely somewhere between 280 and 310.

Even knowing that I was fat, when the doctor told us that I was medically classified as “morbidly obese,” I wanted to punch him right in the throat, under that face of his.

Who was he to call me that? He didn’t know me. We were paying him to remove a rock from inside my body, not to pass judgment on my weight and lifestyle. But that’s what he was doing.

Or at least, it felt like what he was doing.

He explained that I needed to lose a lot of weight, and there were options that he could recommend to help me. But none of them would take effect before the surgery, so he wanted my mom and me to know how dangerous it was to put me to sleep.

“With any morbidly obese person,” he said, “There is an increased chance of not waking up. Of course, if we don’t surgically remove the kidney stone, one of those barbs I showed you earlier will catch in the urethra and shred it as it is passes out of the body. The likelihood of death from blood loss or infection is greater than surgery, but I wanted you to know the risk involved.”

All I could focus on was him calling me morbidly obese, not the risk of death. He explained later that he was basing it on my body-mass-index (BMI), and that my weight-to-height proportions were out of whack. He said that I was over a 40 on BMI charts, which meant that medically I was morbidly obese.

I didn’t care what jargon he used. This was a doctor calling me fat.

“You have to lose weight, B.J.,” he told me from across the desk. “Not only does your weight make this surgery dangerous, but it limits your life. If you don’t do it now, while you’re young, it just gets harder. But you have to do it. You’re just too big.”

He said that to me. I remember the condescension in his tone.

Now you should probably know that I might have a slight problem with authority and people telling me what to do. But this doctor was being a jackass. He was talking to me like I was an ignorant kid, but I was 20 years old! And in college! (Looking back, he was right, and I was an ignorant kid in so, so, so many ways, but that’s neither here nor there.)

I don’t remember what I said to him or much of what was said after that. My feelings were hurt, and I didn’t care if he was right. I wasn’t morbidly obese, I told myself. I was fat, yeah, but morbidly obese was the label was for people who couldn’t walk or get out of their beds. I wasn’t like that. I was fat, but I carried my weight well (said every fat person ever).

I knew I needed to lose weight, but I wasn’t about to do it because some smarmy, condescending urologist told me I needed to. I’d let him pull the rock out of my kidneys, but I wasn’t going to let him insult me.

I never inquired about his methods of weight loss. Because screw him.

Press the play button above to hear the whole chapter, or subscribe to the show to listen to the whole thing.

]]>Chapter 1, in which a urologist calls me morbidly obese, and I just can't handle the truth. #tomcruiseChapter 1, in which a urologist calls me morbidly obese, and I just can't handle the truth. #tomcruiseB.J. Keetonclean4553From Fat to Fit – Prologue- Harry Potter and the 150lb Weight Losshttps://www.geekfitness.net/prologue/
Sun, 20 Aug 2017 19:17:58 +0000https://www.geekfitness.net/?p=4501https://www.geekfitness.net/prologue/#respondhttps://www.geekfitness.net/prologue/feed/0<p>When I couldn't fit on a roller coaster because I weight 310 pounds, something had to go. And that something was 150 pounds and a whole lot of emotional baggage.</p>
<p>The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.geekfitness.net/prologue/">From Fat to Fit – Prologue- Harry Potter and the 150lb Weight Loss</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.geekfitness.net">Geek Fitness</a>.</p>

what’s in this chapter:

I used to be fat. Really fat. Stereotypically fat, really.

I weighed 310 pounds, wore XXL or XXXL shirts and 44-waist pants (and was excited if I ever lost down 40-waist), and had pretty much resigned myself to a life of steady weight gain, sore feet and joints, and being the token jolly fat guy in my little group of friends.

Well, at least to other people, I seemed pretty jolly. Despite constant feelings of self-loathing and insecurity, I did my best to let people think my weight didn’t really affect my life.

A friend of mine once said, in a bit of gossip that made its way back to me, that my weight was like a cartoon thunderhead that followed me around, raining on me, and occasionally striking me with lightning.

That wasn’t so far from the truth. Even though comments like that made their way back to me occasionally, which meant other people obviously did take notice of my size, it took years for me to really accept it myself.

When you grow up fat, you don’t really know that life could be any different.

For as long as I could remember, I was fat. Or rather, I was chubby. Or husky. Or whatever other cute euphemism you want to use to avoid calling a preadolescent boy fat or, God forbid, obese. Despite the major issue (I don’t like the word epidemic) that childhood obesity is becoming, it’s just not in fashion to actually say that children are obese.

So we make up cute terms that take away some of the sting. We don’t want these plump little angels to feel excluded, but looking back, those euphemisms were every bit as hurtful as calling me fat.

Think about it this way: having to buy husky-sized jeans still makes you different from your friends who wear non-husky. Cute shirts that say I’m not fat, I’m just fluffy aren’t fooling anyone. You never see scrawny kids wearing something like that. Only kids like me. Only the fat kids who were covering up for something (and by the way, I never had a shirt that said that.)

But it wasn’t the words and the labels that made me fat. It wasn’t even growing up in the American South–Tennessee in particular–that did it (though that diet certainly didn’t help). No, what made me fat was straight-up, pure-and-simple laziness combined with disinterest and apathy.

I didn’t care that I was fat, and I didn’t have enough motivation or desire to do anything about it.

My whole life, I hated exercise. I hated sports. I hated sweating. I hated getting dirty and grimy and gritty. I hated pretty much anything that involved expending energy.

And that mythical land called the outside? Well, it was off-limits. One of my best friends was an albino, and I always joked that his albinism must have been contagious because I hated and feared the sun almost as much as he did.

So year after year, I kept gaining weight and living an incredibly sedentary lifestyle. I spent hours in front of my TV or my computer, pouring myself into video games and movies, hours upon hours of fun that have shaped me into the geek I am today.

I might have been unhealthy, but I was happy. It never even really bothered me to weigh 310. And because I’m funny and likeable enough, I always had a great group of friends, and girls actually paid attention to me—romantically! Not “just friends” like that Ryan Reynolds movie would have you believe. I was smart, and I was funny, and people were going to like me whether I was fat or not.

Then something clicked. Or rather, it wouldn’t click.

Press the play button above to hear the whole chapter, or subscribe to the show to listen to the whole thing.

]]>When I couldn't fit on a roller coaster because I weight 310 pounds, something had to go. And that something was 150 pounds and a whole lot of emotional baggage.When I couldn't fit on a roller coaster because I weight 310 pounds, something had to go. And that something was 150 pounds and a whole lot of emotional baggage.B.J. Keetonclean4501